These days Szoftex was trying to be a certified m$ dealer, hence the „don't copy, buy“ poster etc... and now they got an MSDN subscription too, so we „were getting all those shiny coasters with the hole in the middle. Many of them had the recent versions of Windows, NT3.x something and WFWG and whatnot... well, I can clearly remember that there was a friendly warning on many of those disks: "do not forget to reinstall the OS once a month". I should have kept one as a souvenir.“ (wrote in 2008 from memory).
By lunch I found the time to generate some simple form for MEC, I'd say about transportation routes and arrivals (of trucks with goods?), and more of small stuff until 17:48... working full time, eh. Then probably rush into shopping, to the east industrial zone, there's the see plus plus discount [shop] (that's the cash'n'carry, but we called it thus), and the dairy's and slaughterhouse's shop by the gate, to get the cheese and salami, pack it all into the car and... go home.
The discount [shop]* is the old merchant's trick, which was tolerated this way or other - saw it in Germany, and at home (those three partners in Čoka, for one, had such a shop for a while) and now here. As Joksa from Čoka said, „look now I can chalk a line across the floor from that wall to this and whatever is on the other side of it I announce as a discount [shop], and as long as I'm pedantic about warehousing accounts, separately for this side and that, I can sell you whatever you want under these or those conditions, depending on which side it is... And it's not much of a problem to move over the line, as long as there's a paper about it“.
So it's a de facto retail, which manages to apply a trick to gain a wholesale status, so there's no retail tax, the goods are cheaper, everybody happy and satisfied, and the state tolerates it on the condition of neat paperwork. The paper is called „we don't sell to citizens, only to firms, so whoever produces a proof of procurement for a firm, can buy“. The firms, on their side, give their workers some slip provided by the shop, with shop's logo and their own stamps, and account the purchase as procurement for their own needs. Of course, we had the slip, so Szoftex was weekly buying various household needs, diapers (Joška's kid was not a toddler yet), toilet paper.
Those shops actually look more like warehouses. This one even had a truck ramp, raised enough so the unloading requires no lifting nor lowering, goes horizontally out of a truck. For furniture it had some rough metal shelves, completely not supermarket style, and the floors were of smooth concrete, so the forklifts and carts could just glide. Even the price tags were clumsy, often written by hand. But they had the barcodes and a cash register with that conveyor belt, so we'd just get everything out of the cart onto the belt, the cashier would scan it all, it went really fast. We'd thunder through it in less than an hour, except maybe first two times, until we scanned the shelves, what they have and what not, and mapped the layout. I don't remember how much cheaper it was, I think at least 20-30%, it paid off.
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* in serbian, „diskont“ is that kind of shop; the regular meaning of „discount“ is covered by „popust“ (ease up, give some slack). Saying „dobio diskont“ (was given a diskont) would mean „I received a discount shop“, so it's said „dobio popust“.
26-XII-2013 - 27-IX-2024